The road slopes gradually then it is covered with slush and a running stream of fresh water on the cleaner sections. This is Bandari Layout near Pragati Nagar where homes have been deserted for the past 10 days and residents are scared of coming back.
Inside the JMJ Court apartments, the water is bubbling out of a pillar. Similarly, in the other apartment complexes, water is flowing out of the borewells which the residents are pumping onto the road. Many of the apartments are still sandbagged as a protection from water.
“The house owners have vacated and are now living with their friends or relatives. Most of them are afraid to come back as the water is seeping out of the pillar and they are afraid what might happen to the building,” says Rakesh Chowdhury, a shop owner adjacent to the complex. “The water flooded in the night and I could salvage only so many things. Everything that was at knee level has been destroyed,” he says, pointing at a wall marking up to which the water reached.
Supervising the clean-up of the cellar of the apartment, Shrikant, an IT professional and house owner, says: “This is what the lake has dumped here. Four vehicles are damaged.” Shrikant saw the flood water rise slowly before the water roared on the roads in the night flooding the cellars of the apartments.
The residents are torn about living and leaving the apartments. While the house owners say that they are safe and not worried about the future, the tenants want to leave the apartments. According to an estimate by electricity department, about 1,500 apartments are affected. “We have changed about 500 electricity meters and we have to change another 1,000. Most of the meters have become unusable as water entered the circuitry,” said an official of electricity department, as workers installed meters in an apartment complex whose cellar was flooded to a height of eight feet destroying the backup generator as well.
It is not just apartment owners who have been affected. “We have lost everything. We don’t have dal or rice or clothes. We are living with the clothes we managed to salvage as the water entered the cellar,” says Rajamma, whose husband is the watchman of an apartment complex. “For four days we used a ladder to get food from the next apartment. All the house owners vacated and left the day after water entered the cellar. We have nowhere to go,” she says.
